Doing the math in Arabic

Friday, Jun 07, 2013

Dubai Week three of my Arabic adventure starts with a maths lesson.

At least, that’s how it looks when the tutor writes on the white board 25÷4=5. But no such luck - I was always pretty good at maths - as the sum is an introduction into today’s verb, a99id, which means ‘to count’.

Learning spoken Arabic without learning the Arabic alphabet throws up one distinct problem - there are no English letters to cover some Arabic sounds. To combat this, sometimes English numbers are used to represent these letters: for example a9tiini, which means ‘give me’, includes a 9 to represent an ‘a’ sound we don’t have in English.

All well and good, until I find myself learning the Arabic words for numbers - for example, the word for ‘four’ in Arabic has either a 9 or a 3 in it, aarba3a or aarba9a. As if I need any extra incentive to concentrate.

If I wasn’t confused enough by this, the word for ‘multiplied by’ is fil, which is also the word for ‘in’, and ‘divided by’ is 9ala, which is also ‘on’. ‘Plus’ is w, the Arabic for ‘and’, which makes sense, and ‘minus’ is naagis, which means ‘missing’.

And for the know-it-alls who spotted that the sum above is wrong, this is intentional. The tutor uses it to find out if we can remember all the way back to our lesson early last week (which seems so long ago, it might as well be my third year of high school), when we learned the words for right (sah) and wrong (ghallat).

Ironic that I always forget the latter when I am much more likely to hear it than the former, not least when studying the complex subject that is Arabic verbs.

The toughest thing about learning the verbs is that the word changes depending on the subject. A different version of the word is used when it follows a different pronoun.

For example, ‘to go’: ‘I go’ is ana baruuh. ‘You go’ when talking to a man is inta bitruuh, but when talking to woman it’s inti bitruuhi. ‘She goes’ is hiya bitruuh, and ‘he goes’ is huwa biruuh.

All different verbs - except one: more often than not, but not always, the version of the verb that follows inta (you, masculine) is the same as the one that follows hiya (she). But the words that follow ana (I), inti (you, feminine), and huwa (he) are different.

Confused? Yes, me too. But it is these quirks of the language that have me addicted to the learning process. My tutor, I am sure, is sick of my voice piping up with ‘But why does it mean that?’ from the back of the classroom (imagine the really annoying kid you went to school with who asked a question every seven minutes - yep, that’s me).

Anything that will keep me interested until the end of the course is welcomed. More than two hours a day, plus another hour studying, is in all honesty a bit too much for someone with a full-time job - and the attention span of a particularly dumb goldfish.

But the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to come into view, along with the shiny certificate that comes with it - if I hit the pass mark of 75 per cent. Despite the fact that my one remaining classmate (the third pupil pulled out of the course last week), whose Arabic is superior at this point, seems worried by this, I am excited at the prospect. I always did well in school exams without much study and revelled in being tested.

But that was when my brain was as sharp as a new kitchen knife. Now, more than 10 years removed from regular study, it feels more like the dull axe in the garden shed that hasn’t been dusted off for years.

Though with each passing lesson, more and more of what I am learning is sticking. Perhaps my confidence won’t be misplaced, I will pass the exam at the first attempt and all the hard work will have been worth it.

But if not, at least the price of the course includes a free re-take …

Follow Jamie’s progress at gulfnews.com and on Twitter @jagoodwin10

By Jamie Goodwin Web News Editor